


One Last Drink

by Dynapink



Category: New Tricks
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Goodbyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 08:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4256853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dynapink/pseuds/Dynapink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandra says goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Last Drink

**Author's Note:**

> _Spoilers for season ten. Contains some slight past Gerry/Sandra, and infinitesimal past Strickland/Sandra. (Sort of functions as a sequel to The Best of a Bad Situation.)_

All things considered, she wasn’t too surprised that her mind should conjure up Jack’s ghost. After all, he was like a beloved uncle, always there for her during the tough patches. Always there for her when she needed to talk through the difficult decisions. And what could be more difficult than deciding to leave UCOS after ten years? A whole decade of her life had been consumed by her job and, more significantly, her team. It only made sense that she should long for his input – even if her subconscious had to stand in for him.

Either way, there he was. Good old reliable Jack, looking, thank heavens, just the way she remembered him instead of the way she’d last seen him, at his funeral. Walking her through the process step by step, countering all her objections, leading her to the decision that her mind knew was the right one, no matter how much her emotions kept telling her no, that her lads still needed her.

“They’ll be all right,” he told her. “Even Gerry.”

Exactly the sort of reassurance that she needed. Then she took in exactly what he’d said and everything came to a screeching halt. Even Gerry? Why Gerry in particular? In an instant her mind, via Jack’s imaginary ghost, came up with a suitable rationalisation and she could move on. But she knew the truth. Hell, she figured Jack had probably known it, too.

\---

It was fitting that her final goodbye to Strickland should be brief, professional, and in the presence of the rest of the team.

Most of their relationship had been just that. Not brief, of course, but definitely professional. Well, mostly professional. 

Only the one single time had it ever been anything else. A dinner date – the one time that they’d ever dined together without talking almost exclusively about a case. Personal conversation for once instead of professional. Enjoyable conversation. Tacit acknowledgment of the strange sort of attraction that had sometimes simmered just beneath the surface. Even, at the end of the evening, a few awkward kisses.

After that, there had been nothing else, and they’d both been more pleased than otherwise about that development. It was good to have it behind them at last and put their association back on a professional footing. It was more comfortable for everyone that way.

But for all that, when they said goodbye as friends and colleagues, she still found herself thinking about it. And she knew he was thinking about it, too.

\---

“I should get going before I find myself over the limit,” she told the boys, and got up from the table before she changed her mind. There were the inevitable, expected jokes about her not being a police officer anymore, not having the influence to get out of trouble if she should get pulled over tonight.

Steve scooted his chair away from the table and reached for her hand. “It’s been good working with you, Sandra,” he said, with that sad, Steve-like smile of his. 

She leaned over and gave him a hug and a slightly boozy kiss. “Steve, it’s been a genuine pleasure to know you.”

Danny got a handshake and a quick kiss on the cheek, and even that seemed to leave him slightly puzzled. “I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to get to know one another better.”

“Right,” he said, and Sandra couldn’t help thinking that even if she stayed on till she put in for her own pension, she might never really know him much better.

Gerry, never one to be fobbed off with second best when his turn came round, stood up and grabbed her into a tight hug. “Bye, Guv.”

Sandra hugged him back. “Bye, Gerry,” was all she said, but somehow for all that it seemed to cover everything that had passed between them over the years. 

Without looking back, she walked out of the old, familiar pub for the last time.

\---

Sandra heard hurried footsteps behind her as she reached her car. There was the briefest flicker of professional caution, but only for an instant. She’d been half expecting him to follow her.

“Forget something, Gerry?” she asked mildly, as she put her key in the lock.

“Just came out for a smoke,” he said. There was a very slightly hurt tinge to his voice, as if she’d accused him of something embarrassing. After all these years, she knew that tone well. She knew him well.

She opened the car door, keeping it between them, and they stood looking at one another in awkward silence. Typical, she thought. Typical of him to exchange the perfect, cool goodbye for this. He never did know when to leave well enough alone. 

“So long, then,” she said, and started to get in the car.

He stopped her, putting his hand over hers. “Sandra, d’you ever wish … well, that things could’ve been different? Coulda worked out between you and me?”

“No.”

He smiled at her, but the expression in his eyes was unreadable. “Nah, me neither,” he said. “Not really. Cor, what a disaster that woulda been.”

She knew better than to go down this path, but she did it anyway. One last time. “It almost was.”

“Yeah. One lousy night together and we couldn’t look each other in the eyes for a month.”

“As I recall, there were two nights, and I wouldn’t say either of them was that all that lousy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Hurriedly, before he could get the wrong idea, she added, “Just not an experience I’d care to repeat.”

Gerry shook his head. “Oh, no. No, ’course not,” he said, obviously doing a bit of hasty covering, himself. “We was always better off as friends and colleagues.”

“Definitely.” 

There wasn’t as much emphasis on her response as there would have been a few years earlier. These days she trusted him to mean it. Not just because he was finally beginning to acknowledge that his days as a ladies’ man were largely behind him, but because of the two of them, and all they’d gone through together. At most, he’d only ever been about half in love with her, and even the attraction had waned over the years, thank heavens. Sandra always told herself that it was even less on her side, but if she were to be completely honest she would admit to a peculiar fondness for him that would probably always be there.

And because she didn’t know what to say to him, she found herself repeating Jack’s words to him. Well, why not? They’d come out of her own brain in the first place. “You’ll be all right without me.”

“Yeah, I reckon.” With a flash of that old, wolfish grin of his, he said, “You’re still the best governor I ever had. In any sense of the word.”

She sighed. “Just have to end it with a touch of class, eh, Gerry?”

“Ah, but you wouldn’t have me any other way, would ya?”

“Not for the world,” she admitted.

She kissed him with the car door between them, a lingering kiss between two people who’d sometimes been just a little more than friends and a little less than lovers.

“Take care of yourself, Sandra,” he said when they parted.

“You, too,” she said, and closed the door and drove away before the old bastard had a chance to see her cry.

\---

The night before she left London, she had dinner with Brian and Esther.

Brian was taking his forced retirement reasonably well, all things considered. Then again, he was so obsessed with the subject of the grandchild who was due soon that it left little room for much of anything else.

“Look at this,” he insisted, putting two sonogram pictures in front of her, though he had to move her salad plate out of the way to do it. “They keep changin’ their minds. Last time they said it was a girl, now they say it’s a boy. Do these two shots look much different to you, Sandra? Put your professional eye to the case.”

She was trying to think of some diplomatic way of saying that even to her professional eye they both just looked like grey blobs, when Esther came to her rescue. “They say they can usually guarantee a boy, but they can’t guarantee a girl.”

“They can’t guarantee anything! They just go back and forth without making their minds up. That could be just a shadow or summat in that second one,” he said, jabbing his index finger at a spot in the middle of one of the pictures.

Patiently, Sandra handed them back and moved her place setting back in front of her. “Well, Brian, you’ll find out one way or the other in a few weeks.”

Esther changed the subject. “So, how do you think the team’s coping without you?”

“They’ll be fine, I’m sure. Whoever my replacement turns out to be, they’ll complain at first, but within a week they’ll have adjusted like nothing’s changed.”

“Even Gerry?” she said doubtfully.

“Bloody hell! Did everyone know about that?”

Esther stared at her. “I just meant that he’s been there with you from the beginning. After all these years it’s bound to be more of an adjustment for him than it will for the others.”

Sandra, embarrassed, stammered, “Well, of course. That’s all I meant, as well. But he seems fine. I don’t think that any of us have been giving Gerry enough credit. He’s a grown man – no matter how childish he may act at times.”

“Well, you’re probably right,” said Esther, letting her get away with the badly covered slip.

\---

Brian saw her to the door.

“You’re right to do this, Sandra,” he said, much to her surprise. “It’s time to go, not hang on just because it’s become a habit.”

“Thank you, Brian,” she said, hugging him. “It means more than I can say to know that somebody understands.”

“I do. I really do. We all get there in the end.”

\---

It only made sense that Jack’s ghost should be the last person she said goodbye to. If anyone in the crowded lounge at Heathrow noticed her talking to herself, they didn’t show any interest. Probably used to it, she thought.

“Well, Jack, I’m not sure if this is the end of the road, or just the beginning.”

“Neither. It’s just a little bend. Have to have a few of those once in awhile to keep things interesting.”

“That’s what I keep trying to tell myself.”

“Well, then you listen to yourself. If I know you, Sandra, you won’t go far wrong.”

“And if I do?”

“Then you’ll set yourself straight, same as you always do.” Just a little too casually he asked, “So, do you think this Max fellow could be…?”

“The ultimate destination? No,” she admitted. She’d asked herself the same question, many times, and always come up with the same answer. Curiously, the offer to work with him – on those few occasions when they would be working together – had been the deciding factor, once and for all. “No, it’s just another fling, I think. For the most part, we’re probably better off as friends and colleagues, too.”

As she got ready to board her flight, she turned to look at her old friend one last time. “Thank you for everything, Jack,” she told him. “Everything you’ve done for me, all of these years, thank you.”

He smiled at her, a proud, paternal sort of smile. “Goodbye, Sandra.”

“Goodbye, Jack,” she said, but he was already fading away. To empty air she said, “I really do miss you most of all.”


End file.
